Energy conferences in the Caspian Sea region have come so fast and furious in recent years that some industry and government figures consider them a dime a dozen. In fact, the organizers are sometimes the ones who draw most advantage from them, in view of steep fees for participation. Nevertheless, the current International Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition looks to be an exception. It is the seventeenth in the series hosted in Baku.

As you know, Europeans with an interest in energy affairs get very excited when discussing the source of the gas they’ll in 5-10 years. Especially in Italy, where Berlusconi’s center-right government is openly defying EU policy on the matter and nurturing very close ties to Russia, the debate tends to be quite heated and often partisan. We would like then to here the view of an informed and independent outsider on this.

Following the recent agreement on principles and prices between Azerbaijan and Turkey for bilateral gas sales, Azerbaijan this week increased again the amount of gas it is willing to provide to the Nabucco pipeline, this time to half its projected capacity.

An anonymous but highly placed representative of the Azerbaijan state oil company, SOCAR, confided to Trend News Agency in Baku last week that agreement has been reached with Turkey concerning the price of Azerbaijani gas and its transit through Turkish territory.

With the entry of Iraq into the mix of potential suppliers of natural gas for the Nabucco pipeline to Europe and the proliferation of alternative supply lines beyond the Russian-sponsored rival South Stream pipeline, the “classical” variant of the Nabucco pipeline is undergoing significant modification, just as it moves closer to final realization.

Recent energy and other developments in Southwest Asia, particularly involving Turkey, Iran and Iraq, sketch the outline of an imminent reorganization of international relations in the region. This will have knock-on effects for Eurasia as a whole and the shape of the international system in coming decades. At the same time, it suggests new and unexpected relevance of the mid-20th century geopolitical theorist Nicolas Spykman.

Peace, Conflict and Cooperation in Greater Eurasian Energy Development Strategy and Security Policy.

About: Robert M. Cutler

Dr. Robert M. Cutler is Senior Research Fellow, Institute of European, Russian & Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa. Based in both Montreal and Brussels, he was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.Sc.), Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies (Gallatin Fellow) and The University of Michigan (Ph.D.), and has held research and teaching appointments at major universities in Canada, France, Russia, Switzerland and the United States. After a dozen years exclusively in universities (where he taught subjects in international relations, comparative politics and political philosophy and all levels of instruction), he expanded into policy analysis and consulting, foremost as an Energy Security and Geo-economics Specialist, now spending up to half his time in Brussels. Besides producing the whole portfolio of scholarly, policy, and public-intellectual information products, he continues to serve on academic-journal and policy-review editorial boards in addition to executive committees of professional scholarly and policy research organizations.